After coming back from Seoul for less than a week, I was in San Jose for the 360|iDev iPhone conference. To keep this short, the conference was really great – not only was it affordable, the sessions were informative, and it was a great community event for networking too. In many other conferences, companies spend considerable efforts in pitching their products or services; I saw a lot less fluff at 360|iDev, and a lot more substance.

It was also great to meet my old friend Sam Wan again. He found out about the conference only a few days before it started from my twitter, and decided to join. You can read about his comments at his new blog.

Another person I met was Rob Toole, who is also a Flash mobile developer, now developing a financial app for the iPhone. Rob invited me and a few other folks to talk about mobile development, the conference, and has posted it as a podcast on iTunes.

A big surprise was from Bill Perry, ex-Adobe mobile evangelist who now works at Nokia in Mountain View. It was good to see Bill again. And who would expect to receive a 5800 XpressMusic phone at an iPhone conference? Thanks Bill for the first S60 5th edition touchscreen phone, so I can start developing for it.

Another ex-Adobe friend I met was Sumi Lim, who now works at Samsung just down the road from eBay where the conference was held. It was really great to chat with Sumi outside of conferences. She’s now working on the Samsung Mobile Innovator program for Windows Mobile. Check it out!

What I got from this conference was more than the technical, but also the marketing and distribution of iPhone applications and games, and met with fellow developers. Needless to say, I can’t recommend this conference enough. Keep an eye on their next event!